2010 in Review

I keep a daily planner and each year I go back and take stock of all that happened in a given year. This year, I unfortunately lost my planner somewhere in November, so I don't have as thorough a record of all of our life events. I had to piece together most of 2010 through looking at old Facebook posts and e-mails. To the best of my ability, here is the recap for 2010....

January-March--we started out the year in Bahrain, with things being fairly uncertain. Shawn's company's contract in Bahrain was set to expire in April and we didn't know where we would go or what we would do after that.

March:
22-Shawn's birthday.
24th-I left Bahrain to fly to the States to attend the birth of my niece.

April:
6-My beautiful baby niece, Mary, was born at home.
Shortly after this, Shawn decided that we should go visit family in Ecuador to fulfill our tax requirements. We planned initially on visiting for only 7 weeks.
21-Arrived in Ecuador.

May:
5-My first visit to the girls' house for girls who have been sexually trafficked in Ecuador. In the following months, I visited as I could.

Sometime in May, Shawn received a job offer from a company here, continuing similar work to what he was doing in Bahrain. We decided to stay in Ecuador.

June:
19-Moved into our house in Cumbaya. (Yes, like Cum-ba-ya, My Lord)
29-My brother Henry arrived to visit for two months. The timing of his visit turned out to be quite fortunate because a few days before he arrived, Shawn received notice that he would be leaving for the duration of Henry's visit to work in the States.

July:
4-Shawn left Ecuador for the States, where he worked for two months on a fire-fighting boat at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
4-We acquired our dogs, a lab and a miniature schnauzer.
8-Shawn arrived at the Deepwater Horizon site.
20-My first day of Ecuadorian driving school, a 3-week class that is a requirement by law. It helped my Spanish, as well as teaching me how to drive a manual car.
27- Claire's 2nd birthday.

August:
3-Passed driving exam--in Spanish!
12-An earthquake happened in Ecuador, which Henry felt. I did not notice anything until he pointed out that all the light fixtures in the house were swaying slightly. My first earthquake!
27-I mowed the lawn for the first time ever in my life.
31-Shawn returned from Deepwater Horizon.

September:
2-Got official Ecuadorian driver's license.
Kai began kindergarten at his new school.
13-Shawn returns from teaching his first class in Ecuador at a jungle oil drilling site.
30-A short coup attempt in Ecuador. Everything was pretty much back to normal the next day.

October:
11-Bought Esmeralda, a 1974 Beetle.
12-13-Had to go to Ipiales, Colombia to renew our visas.
Began regularly visiting the girls' house with my dear friend from Holland, Desi.

November:
1-3-Camping trip with the Douces and the Casa Gabriel boys at the beach in Canoa.
4-My 29th birthday.
15-Kai's 6th birthday.
17-After 5 months without a dryer, we got a new one! A momentous occasion after line drying clothes for all that time.
25-Thanksgiving Dinner with all of our new Ecuador family.
28-National Ecuadorian Census. A very interesting experience during which we were sequestered in our house all day.

December:
8-Quinn's 4th birthday.
13-Attempted armed robbery of Shawn in the street. He managed to wrestle the gun away from the perpetrator and also keep all of the money he had. A harrowing experience to be sure.
24-We hosted a Christmas gathering at our house with all of the Casa G boys, the Douce family and the Ackermanns, another family that works with Casa G.
25-A low-key Christmas.

2010 was a very busy, stressful, challenging, exciting, crazy year. It definitely ended in a different way than I was expecting. Starting the year in the Middle East and then ending up in South America.....definitely not what I had envisioned!